Atmospheric scientist Dr. Chunho Cho is the first recruit to join South Korea’s Green Justice Party. It’s good to see that the Green Justice Party, a merger of the Green Party and the Justice Party, intends to put climate change at the top of its agenda. We can no longer afford to hesitate or pick and choose. The time we have is short. If humanity fails to make significant progress in the next six years, our efforts after that may not matter much. This is why the climate issue should be at the top of the agenda in Korea’s parliamentary and presidential elections, as well as in political elections around the world.
Here is a summary of the message Prof. Chunho Cho posted on Facebook when he joined the Green Justice Party. (Original post on Prof. Chunho Cho’s Facebook)

I worked at the National Center for Meteorology for 30 years. I went into meteorology thinking I would spend my life on a green lawn looking at white clouds floating in a blue sky, but I spent most of my time in front of a computer predicting global weather and writing programs to track carbon, and I retired five years ago. Since then, when I give public talks on the climate crisis, the most common question I get is, “What should I do then?”. I’m amazed and thrilled that there are so many people willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community. But even if individuals become good consumers who use less energy and use fewer disposables, they won’t create a better world to stop the climate crisis if they don’t get involved in politics. Politics can amplify the goodness of individuals to create big results that individuals can’t do alone.
Responding to the climate crisis requires new policies. How can we give up our cars if we don’t have rail lines and buses in our towns? How can we reduce waste if we don’t stop overpackaging our products? Recognizing a sick world won’t change it if we don’t create new systems through political engagement.
We humans live on a limited planet, and we’ve crossed its boundaries. If the world continues to live as we are, we’ll need 1.8 planets. If you’re a farmer, you’re eating the seeds you’ll sow next spring; if you’re an investor, you’re taking half of your principal instead of profit. At this rate, we’ll soon be broke.
The climate crisis is not an inevitable future; it’s something we created, and we can change it. The recently released Sixth Assessment Report of the UN IPCC concluded that we have the technology and capital to tackle the climate crisis, we just need to find a way to turn it around. The barriers are the vested interests of the existing political and economic establishment. It’s not that we don’t have the money and technology to solve the climate crisis. The only thing we lack is the will to change the world. What is lacking is the will to change the world from mainstream politicians. We need to bring down the vested political powers, or the very foundations of our lives will crumble.
Nature is being destroyed by overproduction and societies are collapsing from “competition” with each other. But these serious crises don’t necessarily mean the world is coming apart at the seams; in fact, this is where we can make a leap forward. We were born on a living planet and we can live in a community of care and sharing. We can protect our natural environment, improve our quality of life, and hold on to our neighbors and our descendants. Doom from the climate crisis cannot be our fate.”
The power to overcome this fate can only be achieved by more people standing in solidarity. The Toronto Ecological Hope Coalition is hosting a Spring Foundations for Solidarity seminar online starting Saturday, February 24. (Contact hnet2050@gmail.com) 

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